After Orlando shooting, LGBT and Hispanic community bond with local Muslims

In the aftermath of the deadliest shooting ever in the United States, a bond has strengthened among Orlando groups at the center of the attack.

LGBT groups, Latinos, and the Muslim community are working together after the June 12 shooting at Orlando's Pulse, a gay nightclub, where Omar Mateen killed at least 49 people and wounded 53. Most of the victims were Latino; the shooter was Muslim.

In the Orlando area, Muslim leaders have spoken out against Mateen's beliefs and have gone a step further - by working directly with victims. The Muslim community has given blood for victims and been involved in group therapy with victims' relatives. And they've been welcomed.

During the shooting Mateen called police claiming allegiance to Islamic State, (ISIL) the militant group in Iraq and Syria. CAIR has classified the Orlando attack as "a hate crime, plain and simple," calling ISIL "an aberration, an outlaw” that does not speak for true Muslims values.

Carlos Guillermo Smith, government affairs manager at LGBT rights organization Equality Florida, told Univision News about the huge outpouring of support. "The Muslim and Islamic community were one of the first to step up in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy," he said. "We're standing united against hate."

During a vigil attended by 10,000 people in Orlando on Monday, Smith read the names of 49 victims along with representatives from CAIR and a Puerto Rican community group, Misión Boricua.

"There's been so many countless acts of kindness from the Muslim and Islamic community … I can't quite keep track of them all," said Smith. "We're so grateful and we love them."

"It was a powerful message of unity," said Rasha Mubarak, CAIR's Orlando regional coordinator, who joined Smith in reading out the names of victims. "It will be engraved in my mind for the rest of my life," said Mubarak, 31, who is of Palestinian descent.

The bond between the communities comes amid heightened anti-Muslim rhetoric, including Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. "What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough," he tweeted on Sunday.

Bedar Bakht, one of regulars at the Fort Pierce's Islamic Center, where Mateen attended. told Univision that "three or four people cursed as they drove by the mosque" on Monday. He also called the police after spotting a suspicious man parked in his truck outside of the mosque.

The Orlando attack exposed divisions among both conservative Muslims and Christians over LGBT tolerance, with some making shocking comments in favor of the massacre. "I think Orlando, Florida is a little safer tonight,” Sacramento Baptist preacher Roger Jimenez said in a sermon Sunday.

Local media also highlighted comments by a controversial British-educated Iranian cleric, Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar, who spoke at the Husseini Islamic Center in May. He's known for a 2013 University of Michigan sermon in which he said: “Death is the sentence," homosexuals.

He called Mateen “an ill and perverted, animalistic entity who has abused an ideology to satiate his sad, twisted desires," and offered his "sincere condolences to the friends and families of those massacred.”

Orlando area Muslim leaders are unequivocal. “Islam is a religion of peace. We have to say it again and again and again, because it is," said Syed Shafeeq Ur Rahman, an imam at Fort Pierce's Islamic Center.

"When we greet one another, we say As-Salaam-Alaikum ‘Peace be unto you,’ to kill innocent people for no reason, this is no Islam whatsoever,” he added.